What's the best stove for *all* conditions?.

It's kind of a general post, but as you read through it, you may get an idea of what stove makes the best choice for what conditions.

Enjoy,

HJ

P.S. Sorry I haven't been around as much lately. We discovered bed bugs a few weeks ago. That's a survival story of another type. Let's just say that my camping equipment came in really handy. I hope to write up a blurb at some point as my time gets freed up. In the mean time, a word to the wise: Learn about bed bugs before you next travel. They're back, and they're bad.

Jim! How could you discuss this subject and not mention the good old Trangia? I have used it for years whenever I wanted a simple, dependable, reasonably lightweight stove. I have some reservations about cold weather performance, although if it's good enough for the Swedish Army, it ought to be good enough for me.

Good to hear from you HJ. Sorry to hear about your "home invasion," hope you get that worked out. Take care of you and yours and hopefully we'll hear from you soon.

About the blogpost, I was reading about your personal stoves and noticed you mentioned "capable of simmering" for one and "difficult to simmer" for a lot of the others. I assume you mean difficult to simmer as in for cooking purposes, but as I am pretty ignorant about stoves I thought you might be referring to something else. Does it mean what I think it means, or is this "stove talk" for something else?

Wow Jim that sucks. Hope you get it all worked out. It would be interesting to know how you dealt with them. I've read that extreme heat and diatomaceous earth are the only things that kill them. And then there's preventive stuff like matress encasements, etc. Good luck.

Thanks Jim. The MSR XGK is high on the list, but I also like the MSR Dragonfly and Whisperlite Int'l. Possibly a bit less than the XGK for robustness, but both are fairly tough and reliable multi-fuel stoves. The Dragonfly simmers quite well.

For all conditions? That's very open ended -- some limitations are needed.

The Trangia 25 and Trangia 27 are indeed fabulous, highly reliable cooking systems. I wouldn't exactly call them light weight though, and they are bulky.

Exactly. The question posed to me was "What's the Best Stove for *all* Conditions?" I personally can't feel comfortable recommending an alcohol stove for cold weather. For snow melting, alcohol takes an absurdly long time. It's not really practical. In really cold conditions alcohol is slow to vaporize. Remember, you're not burning liquid alcohol; you're burning vapor.

Hmmm. Well, first recall the KAP Arctic stove, the "Holy Grail" of extreme conditions/extreme cold weather stoves, was developed for the Swedish military precisely because alcohol stoves were inadequate.



Second, recall that for cold weather cooking in conditions less extreme than those calling for a KAP Arctic, the Swedish military often used the Optimus 111.

Yes, the primary issue for the Swedish military was a larger-than-civilian Trangia burner with a distinctive Swedish military mess kit, but even the Swedes themselves didn't try to use them in the dead of winter, particularly in the far north.

HJ

Thank you, Mark. They're a huge hassle. Don't know if we've beat them yet. I will definitely post something about them soon.

lol. No secret jargon here. Simmering means simmering.

From Wikipedia: "Simmering is a food preparation technique in which foods are cooked in hot liquids kept at or just below the boiling point of water." In other words, in order to truly simmer, a stove has to be able to hold the temperature below a roiling boil. With many stoves, it's all but impossible to operate the stove without going into a full roiling boil.

In the back country, a lot of people just prepare meals that require boiling water, but to a true cook, nothing less than a stove capable of truly simmering will do.

HJ

Precisely right. If you read my blog post, you will notice that I listed 12 different stoves. This is my somewhat subtle way of suggesting to the person who posed the question that there is no one right stove for all situations.

The Dragonfly is an excellent simmerer. I enjoy cooking with it very much. It's also very easy to prime because of it's easily adjustable flame. HOWEVER, the Dragonfly is a good deal "touchier" than either the XGK or the Whisperlite and requires more careful use and more frequent cleaning. Dragonflies have let me down a couple times in the backcountry over the years. Fortunately neither time was at a critical juncture. Still, it's a bit of a pain. As much as I like the Dragonfly, it is not on my list of best stoves, unless you are car camping and have a backup stove.

The Whisperlite Internationale is definitely a good stove. I actually prefer the Internationale over the regular Whisperlite if for no other reason than it's priming wick. The Internationale also has the very desireable quality of being able to burn unleaded gasoline or kerosene (with a jet change) in a pinch. HOWEVER, one should be prepared to clean the stove more frequently. Unleaded and kerosene will not burn as cleanly, particularly if you prime with kerosene. Alcohol is the preferred priming fuel in general but most especially with kerosene. On the Internationale, it's best to burn white gasoline whenever available since white gasoline will burn the cleanest and cause the fewest clogs. Unleaded and kerosene should be limited to those times when white gasoline simply isn't available.

HJ

No Esbit stove ?

The "all rounder" that us dinosaurs have used for years is the Svea 123 and its clones - partly because it was all there was. But I have used in winter, down well below zero, as well as in summery Arizona desert conditions, where you barely needed a stove at all. A bit on the finicky side, but it always worked. And you had plenty of "Boy Scout firestarter" for a wood fire, if you needed it.